1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software systems for providing the display and access to software objects in a computer system.
2. State of the Art
Typically, in a computer system, the files which are available for selection by different applications are displayed in a hierarchical manner. The display is part of a user interface on the file management system of the computer system. The user can select a file to be opened by clicking on a representation of the file, or performing a related operation which issues a command to open the file.
A difficulty occurs when different types of software objects are accessible. In the past, the user interface has been designed with certain, sometimes hidden, expectations of the software objects to be accessed. Most file access systems assume that the software objects are based on a single model. Typically, the local file system forms the basis for this model, since files are the most common types of software objects. When a new type of software object is introduced, it is often forced into this file system model. Some types of software objects, however, do not have a good conceptual fit with the file system model. For example, in file systems, small portions of the file can be independently accessed and modified. This type of access is not possible for some other types of software objects, such as database objects, or web pages on the Internet. For these objects, the entire software object is replaced when a change is to be made.
As another example of the differences between types of software objects, file systems are typically based upon containment relationships, where one object can have child, or dependent objects, as well as parent objects. This type of relationship may not apply to other types of objects, such as database records, or web pages, since they are not inherently hierarchical.
In the past, when a new type of software object is introduced, either the user interface software is modified to recognize and handle the new type of software object, or the new type of software object is forced into an existing model, such as the file system model. Because of hidden links between the file system model and the user interface software, modifying the interface to add a new object type can be difficult.
It is desired to have an improved system of displaying and accessing software objects that avoid some of the problems of the prior art, and facilitate access to a variety of different types of software objects.